Tag Archives: foodallergy.org

This year, we’ll have 3 bowls of treats for Halloween. We’ll have the traditional chocolate gooey goodness, a bowl of peanut/tree-nut free treats, and a bowl entirely made up of non-food party favor-ish goodies.

Why? Why not? I was able to pick up a bunch of party favors at the Dollar Tree, and my wife Bethany got some Halloween themed stuff from Target. The no-nuts candy wasn’t a big deal either, all we had to do was read the label… which we’re used to. Even the extra bowl was only $1. It wasn’t a whole lot of effort or money.

My point, I guess, is that it isn’t a lot of effort but it can be a big huge gigantic deal for a kid. What’s a big deal? To feel included on a holiday where you’re hyper aware that you’re different. To know that this piece of candy doesn’t contain nuts or wasn’t “processed in a facility that may also use peanuts or tree nuts.” To know that if you’re allergic to dairy or chocolate or just about everything that everyone else can eat or isn’t one of the top 8, but this little trinket or toy (or 2 or 3 if you’re at our house) is all yours. To know that you don’t have to go home & “trade up” for safe candy on this one. To know that your parents didn’t have to drop off a safe treat with all the neighbors ahead of time, and that someone else “gets” it.

I always liked getting those Little Hugs drinks(which may be a safe treat), but some people would complain about the weight. That would have been gone by the time I got back to the road when I was a kid. Then again, times have changed. When I was a kid, we had to play the “guess who you are” game. If I asked a kid his name now, the next ring of the doorbell would probably be the local police. Also, kids… always let your parents check your candy for razor blades or syringes.

Like I said, we read labels. Luckily shellfish is generally easy form me to avoid in packaged foods, slightly less so in restaurants. Our little girl Molly can’t do eggs. Well, she can do eggs baked into things, but has to avoid straight up eggs, mayonnaise, some mustards, custard, and we just noticed… Mallow Cups? (I hate them, they are the devil’s candy. The wife loves them though… even though it tastes like someone replaced the inside of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with sunscreen.) Will we have to avoid meringue too? Who knows? Hopefully she outgrow her allergy, I’ll never get over mine without some kind of cure.

There are many others out there going through the same thing. We can stick together, and support each other. We can ask those without any food allergies to support us too. Spreading awareness is the key to keeping us all safe. So, take a few minutes to learn about the #TealPumpkinProject. Use the hashtag on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc.), get a pumpkin and paint it teal, and/or print out the fliers. Get some safe treats.

Haven’t been blogging much lately, but I have a new job, am trying to get mazes done when I can, and I’ve been researching several potential purchases to help with said job online. I will no doubt get back to blogging once things level out.

I finally got my prescription renewed, & got a double-pack. Thankfully I’ve never had to jab myself with one. I did try the practice one a few times. So, what do you do with your expired ones? Does anyone take donations or recycle them?

I’m also always trying to figure out how to come up with cash to buy more goofy guitars, and Ernie and the Berts is writing more stuff & hoping to record ASAP. I try to catch other local & national shows when I can.

I’d also appreciate if you could spread the word by sharing that url or this blog.

I have just over a month to get these donations in, so let’s get the ball rolling!

Here’s a little bit of information about FAAN & how your donations are going to be used:

About Us

Founded in 1991, the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) is the world leader in information, resources, and programs for food allergy, a potentially life-threatening medical condition that afflicts as many as 15 million Americans, including approximately 6 million children.

A nonprofit organization based in Fairfax, Va., FAAN has approximately 25,000 members in the U.S., Canada, and 58 other countries. FAAN provides information and educational resources about food allergy to patients, their families, schools, health professionals, pharmaceutical companies, the food industry, and government officials.

Mission

To raise public awareness, to provide advocacy and education, and to advance research on behalf of all those affected by food allergies and anaphylaxis.

Why We Walk

We walk to fund food allergy awareness, advocacy, education, and research programs.

We walk to provide understanding, hope, and an opportunity for those affected by food allergies to network.

We walk to save a life!

Over the years, FAAN has been at the forefront of progress in food allergy awareness, advocacy, education, and research. Findings from research studies have been used to change federal and state laws, improve school policies, raise public awareness, improve the daily lives of individuals with food allergy, and provide education for patients, caregivers, and health professionals. Funds from programs like the FAAN Walk for Food Allergy support FAAN’s efforts to achieve these feats.

FAAN continues to lay the groundwork for a brighter future for those with food allergies.

How FAAN Uses Your Contributions

FAAN uses contributions to fund its education, advocacy, research, and awareness efforts. Eighty-one cents of every dollar is spent on innovative research and programs that help give families struggling with food allergies a fighting chance. Since 2004, FAAN has funded more than $4.6 million in research. Education remains the single most important component of staying safe while living with food allergies. Since 2006, FAAN has funded nearly $175,000 in Community Outreach Grants to local support groups throughout the country.

I haven’t written about food allergies in a while. I would think that Epi-Man would be pleased with this post. Check out this article about legislation being brought forth to give easier access to epinephrine auto-injectors and their administration by school staff.

I’m not big on the gub’ment micro-managing… but how can I not get behind this? I’d like to see something like this eventually passed for restaurants too. Why not have one more step in keeping kids & adults safe?

Yes, the act is aimed at kids with food allergies… but us adults are out there too. What if a teacher, administrator, janitor, nurse, or anyone else on site has a life-threatening food allergy? This kind of thing could come in handy for all of us out there.

“Give It Up!” for Food Allergy Awareness Week

Food Allergy Awareness Week is here! Join FAI’s 2011 “Give It Up” advocacy campaign and show your support for the 12 million Americans with food allergies—including some 3 million children. Here’s how it works:

Show your support by giving up a favorite food for the week, a day, or just one meal.

Write your elected officials, urging them to increase federal funding for research that will lead to a cure. (If you wish, you can add your story to the letters we’ve prepared for you.) The federal government only spends about $28 million a year on food allergy research—far less than on other important diseases. It’s time to solve this major public health problem!

Enter our poster contest! Enter on your own, or have family and friends join in the fun. You could win a Divvies gift certificate!

Since 2007, Food Allergy Awareness Week has put the spotlight on life-threatening food allergies. FAI and other concerned organizations will be conducting activities throughout the week.

Read a statement from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—the agency responsible for most federally funded food allergy research.

Our Mission

FAI supports research to find a cure for life-threatening food allergies; clinical activities to improve diagnosis and treatment; public policy to increase federal funding for research and create safer environments for those afflicted; and educational programs to make the hospitality industry, schools, day care centers, and camps safer.

This week blew up on Twitter as far as food allergies. So much went by that I wanted to promote, comment on, blog about, or whatever… but I didn’t get to any of it. Oh well. There are others out there… writing, educating, & commenting. So… if you’re interested & you can keep up, here’s a run-down of stuff that you need to see:

First off, the ridiculousness with food allergy protesters in Edgewater, FL:

The Allergid Kid | Today’s Lesson: Hate and Intolerance – Excellent commentary here! You need to check out the flier that was distributed. Reading that the teacher showed the class news footage of the protest had me all heated last night. It’s basically validation from the teacher for all the other kids to single out the food-allergic child for harassment. Aren’t we nationally campaigning against bullying? Someone send Obama & Brittany in there.

It was Food Allergy Awareness Week for WPIX TV 11 in New York. Awesome. There’s a plethora of incredible content available here: NY PIX 11 | Food Allergy Week – I still haven’t made my way through all of it. Looks like they’re covering all the angles though… form safety at restaurants and schools, to personal profiles, to cooking, to businesses helping out with allergy needs, to dealing with it mentally, to research, to legislation. I really applaud the drive & effort… and hope other news stations across the country pick up on this!

Please, check it out… and pass it on as it asks. As I look through to try & grab a nice important point for a quote, I find multiple points to be profound. Rather than re-posting the whole thing, just go read it! You won’t be sorry.

Excerpt below…

For the purposes of this article, we aren’t talking about the “it gives me gas” allergies or personal dietary preferences, we are talking about deadly serious stuff. Every restaurant has its own policy on how to deal with food preferences, and we can argue all day about the best way to handle that. But when a customer tells you they have a very serious allergy, there are only two ethical choices you can make. You can serve the customer, making every feasible effort to ensure their food doesn’t contain the allergen. Or you can refuse to serve them. Any other choice puts that customer at grave and undue risk. It also threatens your reputation, finances and insurance, and your ability to sleep at night. Do you really want to risk poisoning your clientele?

Assuming the answer is no, the rest of this article is divided into three sections, for chefs & cooks, front of house, and management / owners. You should read all three sections so that you can understand each other’s responsibilities. This is geared toward folks in the restaurant industry, but home cooks can learn important ideas for when they entertain guests with food allergies.

I got a letter in the mail today from Taco Bell. You may be familiar with my emails to them concerning the death-filled tacos that they were recently peddling. This is perhaps the best reply I’ve ever received to any of my either serious or goofy letters to any company.

I’ll dispense with the usual long-winded introduction and get right to it…

You can see that along with the letter, I received five $5 Taco Bell Bucks certificates. That’s $25 in death-free Taco Bell food. That’s got to be the coolest thing I’ve ever received besides my T-shirt from Turner’s. I’m not sure if they’re buying me off, rewarding me, if they make so much profit per item that it really doesn’t matter if they give this much away for free, or what. This almost makes me want to write back to Pillsbury/Totino’s and make them feel ashamed for sending me three 35¢ coupons. In fact, I may add that to the list.

The best, and I mean absolute best thing about this letter is that they’re forwarding my request to Pizza Hut. Wow. I trust you’ve seen my unanswered letters? I can’t even express how hilarious and ridiculous and absolutely gratifying that is.

Death Taco. No, that’s not the coolest new metal or grindcore band, although maybe it should be. It’s what I’m (of course) calling the newest Taco Bell menu item. I have had some inquires as to why I hadn’t mentioned it yet.

Well, I did make a faint mention via Facebook or Twitter a while ago, but had declined to rant here as I’ve been relentlessly trying to contact Taco Bell. You know how successful webforms are, so of course I got no answer from that, then I fished around for email addresses to send a full email, bugged them via Twitter for an address, and even posted an Ask Yahoo! question. Out of nowhere, I finally received a reply, and I have no idea if it was in reply to the webform, my emails to random Yum! Brands and Taco Bell email addresses, or some other forum.

I’d like to share my original messages with you. First the one via webform:

Hola, mis amigos de Titan Taco! Firstly, this isn’t about an incident at a specific Taco Bell, but the form didn’t allow room for general inquiries. I’d like to express my disappointment with a commercial that I saw advertising new shrimp tacos. Well, I guess my disappointment is not with the commercial, but with the product… and the main ingredient. I don’t think I can express my thoughts in a box with a mere 500-character limit. Do you have an actual email address where I can contact someone?

I’d like to express my disappointment with a commercial that I saw advertising new shrimp tacos. Well, I guess my disappointment is not with the commercial, but with the product… and the main ingredient.

I have a severe shellfish allergy, and Taco Bell has been a shellfish-free dining safe haven for me for years. It’s one of the few places where I never had to worry about shrimp, crab, lobster, oysters, etc. ending up in my food, or worse yet… crossing paths in the kitchen somewhere.

I will sadly have to cross Taco Bell off of my list of places to dine… but I’d like you to know that there are many of us out here with severe shellfish allergies who have an increasingly difficult time finding safe places to dine out. Fast food joints have long been a safe-haven for those of us with a shellfish allergy… as most fine dining and now even chain family style restaurants have several shellfish dishes prepared on multiple kitchen surfaces. Formerly, as long as I stayed away from Long John Silver’s, I was OK. Taco Bell, KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, …were all safe places.

I guess I’ll now have to get my quick Mexican fix at Qdoba or Chipotle.

If you’d like to know what it’s like to dine out with a shellfish allergy, please read this blog post.

Here’s an excerpt…

If you know me in person, have dined out with me, or have ready any of my lunacy online… you most likely know what I have a severe shellfish allergy. What does that mean exactly? Well, it means that I can’t eat any shellfish, or I go into anaphylactic shock. Not only can I not eat the shellfish (that’s crustaceans & molluscs including but not limited to ,shrimp, prawns, lobster, crab, crayfish, oysters, mussels, clams, scallops, octopi, squid, snails, and probably even scorpions and pill bugs), but I can’t eat any food that comes into contact with it. That means, if you cook shrimp on the grill, take it off, and put my steak on without washing the surface, it’s the same as me eating the shrimp.

I certainly can’t expect the restaurant to clean the grill in between every meal, as that’s certainly not productive on their end… I just usually try to see where the shellfish is prepared, and eat from another cooking surface. That seems easy enough, right?

I get that it’s my responsibility. Yes, I’ve had an epi pen. But I’d really love to not ever have the need to use one. I’ve even considered getting Allergy Cards, but they seem a little pretentious or something… like my verbal reminder isn’t enough.

Well, getting me in to a place with shellfish is an issue in itself. Why? Well in with the aforementioned cooking surface issue…

I hope that this helps explain what people like me go through, and I hope that you re-consider selling death-filled tacos!

Running from the border,

-Eric

And, this is the reply, although I’m not sure if it’s the reply to one of the above messages, or in poking around on Twitter:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about Shellfish allergens concerning our new Pacific Shrimp Tacos. We want you to know that we take these matters very seriously and that the business of our customers is our top priority. We value loyal customers such as yourself and would like to take the opportunity to win your business back.

To , to our customers who might have Shellfish allergens, we have displayed information at multiple locations in our fish. These include Shrimp allergen signs that are placed on our window and door clings as well as in our ads where orders are taken. While the Pacific Shrimp Tacos are offered for a limited time only, all Taco Bell employees have been trained and certified to not have any food products come in contact with Fish and Shellfish during cooking and/or serving.

We would like to send you some Taco Bell Bucks as a token of our thanks, so please email me back with your mailing address. We hope you will continue to “Think Outside the Bun” at Taco Bell, and appreciate you taking the time to write to us.

Thank you for the reply! I was beginning to wonder if Taco Bell has a stand on the issue. While I am pleased to hear about the allergen warning signs along with the employee training and certification, I must say that I still have some reservations about safety. I am relieved to hear that the shrimp tacos are available for a limited time only.

It is great that you take responsibility in posting signs about allergy warnings. Your fellow Yum! Brands organization, Pizza Hut, ought to take note. They display allergen information on their website, noting that the pizza sauce may come into contact with shellfish… but there’s no shellfish on the menu. When I asked where the contamination may occur (e.g. in the processing/canning facility?) they were unable (or I sadly suspect unwilling) to provide a detailed response.

Back to the subject of Taco Bell… the giant window-clings showing what I’m sure to many is a succulent appetizing piece of shrimp spilling out of a lovely soft taco shell looks to me like a giant Mr. Yuck sticker or the old-time skull & cross-bones “poison” logo that you’d see in cartoons. They serve as an effective if not spine-chilling reminder as to the presence of shellfish allergens on the premises. They would also kick my survival instincts into gear, not even letting me enter the presence. Seriously. I would wager that right now, it would be pretty difficult to physically get me into a Taco Bell restaurant. My Eustachian tubes are starting to itch just thinking about it. I realize that this is also a highly personal mental health issue, but one that ought not be taken lightly, as it’s grounded in a very real fear.

Recently I read the blog of a man who almost died when he ordered a vegetarian Indian potato curry dish that he was assured was safe. Apparently the dish was flavored with a shrimp brine… which ought to be disturbing to vegetarians, vegans, kosher folks, and people with shellfish allergies. This is alarming to say the least. I realize that simple cross-contamination may not seem as serious as flavoring an entire dish with shrimp-juice, but I can assure you that it is indeed just as deadly. Our friends with wheat/gluten and peanut allergies seem to get a lot of attention lately, hopefully it will spill over to the rest of us with the “big 8” and those who aren’t even covered by that umbrella.

Have you taken the allergen training, or do you know what’s involved? I am finding it hard to tactfully express my concerns about the way that the message was conveyed to Taco Bell employees and the actual willingness of the employees to understand and comply. We’ve all watched training videos on various subjects and rolled our eyes, promptly taken pamphlets and placed them in the trash, or been angered when someone who doesn’t do our job gives us a new or added process that we must adhere to when we’re sure that the person suggesting the changes has never been in our shoes.

While I mean no disrespect to Taco Bell or any fast food restaurant, have you been to a Taco Bell lately? Sometimes I am concerned about the personal hygiene and motivation of the employees let alone the cleanliness and efficiency of the kitchen. Sadly, the low quality and poor service of fast food establishments has become a passively accepted facet of 21st Century life in the United States. For evidence, I give you the term “McJob“.

I have a theory that for so long now, it has been expressed to kids everywhere to get higher education so you don’t end up as a laborer, janitor, or fast food employee… that fast food jobs have garnered such a negative connotation, the only people left willing to take the jobs are the highly unmotivated individuals, people with no other options, or people using the part time jobs for extra cash with no real pride in their work since there’s no real fear of losing the job or striving to move up the chain of command.

I would invite you to imagine that in the Taco Bell kitchen where you are about to dine there are the standard (and innovative!) sour cream and cheese caulking-gun looking dispensers all loaded on the food preparation area… along side a caulking-gun-looking dispenser filled with a highly toxic pest-control chemical that looks interestingly enough like cheese or sour cream. Would you still feel safe in eating there? Sure. The employees can read. Sure, they know the difference. Are they ever rushed in a fast food kitchen? Do mistakes ever happen? Of course. I’m guessing you would at least think twice or watch closely before you dine.

I understand that this scenario is preposterous because I would hope that some sort of federal regulations would forbid any toxic chemicals from being stored in a food preparation area. No such federal regulations exist for people like me, although Massachusetts is moving forward with this type of thing.

While I trust that your training an certification was put forth with the best of intentions, you must understand that I question its implementation, practicality, and how it’s received and practiced by what amounts to be the first line of contact with your customers… the Taco Bell team member. What exactly does the certification say? Does each employee have it, or does a certification apply to an entire restaurant or shift?

I challenge you to quiz the workers at Taco Bells in various locations… inner city, suburbs, malls, and the combo units, and see how much the workers really know about cross-contamination and allergy issues and how they’re observed in a Taco Bell kitchen. (Hopefully, they fare better than Subway employees.)

All that said, I appreciate and applaud the considerable thought and effort that has already gone into allergen awareness. Spreading knowledge is the first step. Did you know that May 9th-15th 2002 is the thirteenth annual Food Allergy Awareness Week? Now is the time to act and inform, my friend!

I would certainly appreciate some Taco Bell Bucks, if you’ll understand that I may hold on to them until well after the current Pacific Shrimp Taco promotion is over. (Pending reviews, it may not last all that long, eh?) Taco Bell had previously been a shellfish-free Mexican-ish fast food haven for me for many many years. I can’t tell you how many tacos I ate at the mall nearby to where I grew up when I was a teenager. A dollar went much further at Taco Bell than it did at McDonald’s, Burger King or anywhere else in the food court.

My address is…

Eric Aixelsyd
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Pittsburgh, PA XXXXX-XXXX

I would like to thank you once again for your time and the thoughtful informative reply. I look forward to perhaps what may be a continued dialog about allergy awareness issues in the fast food industry, and more specifically relating to Taco Bell and other Yum! Brands.